Flathead High: Surveys hitting mailboxes of neighbors

From roads lined with parked cars of students and staff to problems with litter and traffic, complaints have been varied from people who live near Flathead High School.

A handful of residents near the school have complained to Kalispell about their relationship with the school.

After meeting several times with Kalispell Public Schools officials and some of those residents, the city has mailed out surveys to about 300 property owners within a three-block radius of the high school.

“It became clear in those discussions that a more meaningful path forward is to be inclusive to people in the neighborhood,” said Katharine Thompson, Community and Economic Development manager for Kalispell.

“That’s why the survey went out, to get a pulse on what’s sort of front and center on the minds of neighbors in that area.”

A couple of neighbors approached the Kalispell City Council with their complaints last August. They said they were gathering signatures to petition the council to make the neighborhood around Flathead High School a residential permit parking area.

Mailed out Wednesday, the survey asks people to list their neighborhood concerns, the changes they would like to see and the area’s best attributes. The survey also asks if people want to form a group to try to work through their neighborhood’s challenges and improve its strengths.

“It’s just a one-pager to gauge some high points of interest and includes a postcard to encourage folks to give us their contact info if they’d like to continue on and maybe form a neighborhood committee,” Thompson said.

Parking is a perennial issue around the century-old high school that has more than 1,500 students.

“It’s easy to look at the number of people at that school every day and realize that a school built roughly 100 years ago could not have anticipated the level of driving we now see or the number of people who would be at that building every day,” Thompson said. “So there is a lot of pressure for parking.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.